When the World Fell Apart (And It Felt Like a Sin to Mourn You)
by stealingthestars
Summary: And you cried. What else could you do, when he was gone and so were you and the world was falling apart? / Dick-centric. Birdflash, AU where Dick and Wally were together and the latter never left the team. / Rated T for language, depression, and character death (?) / I do not own Young Justice


**Hello, readers! I'm very excited, this being my first ever Young Justice fanfiction and whatnot. Granted, it's incredibly short, but that's mainly due to the refusal of this plot to get out of my head until I put something down. I do currently have another story in the works, but when/whether I'm going to publish it, I don't know. Anyway, Birdflash, Dick-centric, and in second person. Rated T for cursing, depression, character death, etc.**

 **Enjoy! :)**

 **~umana**

 **Disclaimer: If I owned Young Justice I would be out making new episodes instead of writing crappy fanfiction.**

* * *

Your leave of absence was short-lived.

You were back, ready to bark out orders with your Eskrima sticks strapped to your sides and the electric-blue bird emblazoned on your chest and every operation running smoothly, everything just as it had always been.

But nothing was the same.

You could feel him, as though he was right where he was supposed to be, stretched out on the couch or raiding the fridge or standing, ready for duty and itching for a bit of excitement with his fiery hair poking in all directions and that stupid grin that you loved so much plastered on his face. You felt him there; it was like he was a ghost, except he wasn't because there were no ghosts for the living and he _sure as hell wasn't dead._

No matter how many times they told you he was, you refused to believe it.

And yet you did nothing but watch as this pretender, this _kid,_ ran around wearing his suit, wearing his title like he could just waltz in and _replace your best friend._

He would always be Impulse to you.

And you hated yourself for hating him, he was just a kid, you told yourself, and this was what Wally wanted, and Bart was mourning the loss of his predecessor as much as anyone else so you had no right to despise him.

But you did.

Because he was there, and Wally wasn't, Wally was gone, no, not dead, _gone,_ lost, waiting to be found.

And you would find him.

You only came back because you were _sick and tired_ of revisting the evidence that you'd seen over and over and couldn't make sense of, because there wasn't enough petty criminals in Gotham to keep your mind away from mourning.

It wasn't enough, and your insides twisted every time you thought about him but still you held on to the memory of the feeling of his kisses for dear life because _you would feel them again if it killed you._

The only things keeping you sane was the law of conservation of mass and _he couldn't just disappear_ and _he. was. not. dead._ So you drowned your grief in red string and pictures and newspaper clippings tacked to walls, in every book about alternate universes and the string theory that you could get your hands on. And you refused to mourn him, because that was the same as giving up and you _would not give up_ until he was back home, safe and sound.

And nightmares brought sleepless nights and dark circles and _get some rest, Dick,_ but you couldn't, you couldn't sleep without him next to you.

The sound of his breathing was a lullaby you had grown far too accustomed to.

For a while, you couldn't stop pacing, couldn't keep your body still without a torrent of emotions coming straight back and knocking you off your feet and _you couldn't afford to fall over at a time like this._

So you kept in motion, going, going, going, like he used to, and you finally understood the mentality of a speedster because there was no way you would just _sit there_ and let everything crumble around you.

And you occupied yourself, you found ways, because there were always people to be saved and mysteries to be solved and _best friends to be found._ You kept your mind from retreating into that dark, dark place it often threatened to drift away to, you led your team and threw yourself into the work and prayed and prayed and prayed to the God you had never believed in.

As days slipped by, you felt yourself doing the same.

And suddenly your head was plagued with worst-case scenarios and what-ifs and _don't think like that, Dick, it's dangerous._

Dangerous it was, because sometimes you'd find yourself stumbling into the road or towards the edge of a rooftop because it just seemed so much _easier_ but you wouldn't, you couldn't, you had to be there and _who else would bring him back?_ and you would go through hell and back, as many times as it took, if it meant seeing him again, and a few months of agony was nothing.

A few months turned to a year, and with it came the first New Year's spent without him since you were eleven. You were sick of counting, too much time wasted numbering the days since he had disappeared so instead of ticking down the seconds to yet another day without him you sat in silence and suffocated in your sorrows.

Your only resolution was to look _harder._

You had missed something, you had to have missed something, because there was no way, _no way_ that you were wrong, after everything.

You couldn't be wrong.

So why were you sitting in front of his memorial, his _goddamn memorial,_ the tears finally flowing freely like they had been threatening to do for ages? Why now, when your heart still throbbed with _he's not dead_ and your head was hell-bent on proving it? Why, when denial was a word you refused to hear no matter how many times it was thrown at you?

Why now, when you were supposed to be looking for him?

No, you were _supposed_ to have had him back by now. Case files, missing persons reports, you'd solved all of them, _all of them,_ and the _one_ person you couldn't bear to lose was the one who refused to be found. You cursed at the speedster for being _so fucking stubborn._ You screamed at the world for being _so fucking unfair_ and you swung with aimless fists until your knuckles bled and you kicked chairs and you slammed doors and you threw glass objects at walls just to hear them mimick your heart.

And you cried.

What else could you do, when he was gone and so were you and the world was falling apart?

What else _was there_ to do when you'd lost everything? when you'd failed him? And years and years of training didn't prepare you for this, didn't prepare you for losing your best friend, not like this.

So you let the mask break and let the tears fall and let your shoulders wrack with sobs that never stopped.

And you fell away.

* * *

"Hey, Dickie Bird. Miss me?" And his suit was coated in blood and there were circles under his eyes and dirt matted in his red hair but he was beaming, grinning that _godforsaken grin_ and for the first time in sixteen months, you let yourself smile.


End file.
